Two mobile games get the BAFTA nods in this year's celebrations

The BAFTAs were held recently, which are like a slightly worse version of the Pocket Gamer Awards, and there were some pretty interesting choices. Astro Bot won Best Game again, somehow, and the whole shebang was mostly punctuated by console games, but there were a few important wins for the mobile sphere.

If you were anywhere near any device that was capable of playing a game, then you no doubt heard about Balatro. It burst onto the scene in February 2024, before coming to mobile in September. Frankly, it belongs on phones. It's not the most demanding app, and you can bash out a run whenever you have a few minutes.

Anyway, it continues its run of award nods by swiping the Best Debut BAFTA, seeing off competition from the likes of Pacific Drive and the hilarious Thank Goodness You’re Here. It just serves as proof that you can’t go wrong with a card game in any form. I only hope that Digimon Alysion gets that much love. 

Our next win in the mobile sphere comes with Best Evolving Game, and this one is a massive personal conflict. Final Fantasy XIV was in that category and lost, although, to be fair, the newest expansion has been just horrible. My heartbreak aside, we can celebrate that Vampire Survivors claimed that award, and it is a very worthy choice. 

Finally, not a competitive award, but a very important one nonetheless. A game would be nothing without a strong musical score backing it up, so it is lovely to see Yoko Shimomura being recognised with the BAFTA Fellowship. The mind behind the music of such mobile titles as The Alchemist Code and Kingdom Hearts Unchained, her back catalogue contains some truly impressive works. Don’t let the fact that Square Enix shut down Unchained affect your evaluation of Shimomura's work, they just want to continue shattering my soul piece by piece.